Heel Turn
by Aurora West
Summary: You only turn fifty once, Audrey's sister insisted. Well, yeah, but when you're going to live practically forever, fifty doesn't seem like such a big deal, and a party's not how Audrey wanted to spend her day.


Disclaimer: _Atlantis: The Lost Empire_ is the property of The Walt Disney Company.

Author's Note: A heel turn is a dance step. From Wikipedia: "During the course of rotation, the dancer's weight moves from toe to heel of one foot while the other foot swings close to it, then forward from heel towards the toe of the just closed foot."

* * *

Heel Turn

Audrey was going to kill her.

She'd told her, over and over and _over_ again, that she absolutely, under _no_ circumstances, wanted a birthday party. She just wanted to _relax_. 1946 was the first year in way too many years that she wasn't fighting Nazis in some capacity, and all she wanted to do was spend time by herself, maybe celebrate her birthday with a tequila—or four or five—and definitely not have to worry about some _loco_ party where she'd have to put on her people face and smile for hours on end. There weren't a lot of great things to be said for the military, but at least no one had expected her to smile much when she was on the job. And of course she'd been on the job for most of the past four years, ever since the Japanese had dropped those bombs on Pearl Harbor.

But Nena, her infuriating older sister, didn't care. "You'll only turn fifty once," she'd said, and though this was technically true, Audrey still thought it was stupid. What she'd wanted to do was point out that she'd probably turn twenty _thousand_ and fifty before she died, but the thought of that was still so unfathomable that she didn't.

There was a loud rap on the door, and, a deep scowl on her face, Audrey went to open it. As expected, she found Nena on the other side.

"You ready?" Nena asked, a grin on her face.

Audrey crossed her arms over her chest. "I seriously can't get out of this?"

With a long-suffering sigh, Nena said, "This is exactly why I came over to pick you up. I figured you wouldn't show."

"Yeah, you were right."

"It'll be _fun_. Everybody wants to see you! Remember the Cortez boys next door when we were kids? I even got them to come!"

Despite herself, Audrey was impressed by this. "Wow. Last time I saw Miguel, he was crying from the bloody nose you gave him. I'm surprised he wants anything to do with either of us."

Nena laughed. "You'd made that little motorized glider, remember? And he broke it. I couldn't let him get away with that."

Audrey grinned at her sister, but then her smile faded and she pursed her lips. "How many people did you invite, anyway?"

Waving her hand in a way that Audrey didn't trust, Nena said, "Not too many."

"Nena."

"Not too many! And by the way, you can't wear that."

Audrey glanced down at her loose-fitting shirt and dungarees. "There's a dress code at my own birthday party?"

" _Sí_." Nena stepped inside, drawing a disgruntled protest from Audrey as her sister shouldered her out of the way. "You have to wear something nice. Do it for Mom and Papi," she said, heading for Audrey's room.

Scowling, Audrey said, "I don't _have_ anything nice. And Papi doesn't care!"

"Mom does!" came Nena's voice.

Throwing her hands up, Audrey followed her sister into the bedroom. The house only had two. Obviously, she could afford something bigger, but the important thing was the garage space, and this house had come with more garage than house. She spent most of her time out there, anyway. The house itself was for sleeping, then showering, then cooking. If she felt like it.

Nena was impatiently pushing clothes aside in the closet and Audrey didn't bother telling her she was only going to be disappointed. Nice clothes weren't really Audrey's thing. There was the dress she'd bought right after she'd gotten back from Atlantis, but she was hardly going to show up wearing _that_. She may have been old enough to be a grandmother, but she certainly wasn't going to _dress_ like one.

"Aha!" Nena cried, her voice muffled by denim. With a triumphant look on her face, she pulled out a dress that Audrey didn't even remembered owning. "This isn't too bad. Why can't you wear this?"

Gingerly, Audrey took it. It was a blue, double-breasted dress, belted at the waist, with short, darted sleeves. "I don't know, Nena," she said. "This is so…" Making a face, she finished, " _Girly_." Her sister, she noticed, was in a pair of high-waisted, knee-length wool shorts and knee-high socks, with a plaid jacket. She looked great, even at fifty-three. Audrey would have been happy to wear something like that if she'd _owned_ anything like it, but nice clothes were just one of those things that slipped her mind. She usually had other things to think about.

When Nena just raised her eyebrows, Audrey sighed and started changing. "I'm only showing up to this for Mom and Papi," she said, her tone disgruntled and muffled by the dress as she pulled it over her head. "And don't you _dare_ throw me another one of these."

"Seventy-five's a long way off. Maybe you'll change your mind."

"I won't," Audrey replied emphatically, struggling with the buttons on the front of the dress. They were stiff with disuse. Then, she turned around, holding her arms out. "There. I'm wearing a dress. And I look _muy estúpido_."

" _Ay dios mío_ , you don't," Nena said, sounding exasperated. "You look fine! I'd lend you some of my pants, but they wouldn't fit you right. I don't exactly have your figure anymore."

At that, Audrey absently touched the crystal around her throat. Nena was only three years older than her, but anybody who saw them together would think they were mother and daughter. Audrey felt, in body at least, no different than she had on that day thirty-two years ago that she'd first put the Atlantean crystal on. While Nena had aged—gracefully, there was no doubt—Audrey had stayed the same, with the figure and face and skin of an eighteen-year-old.

Normally it didn't matter. The people around her had either known since 1914, or they were such a transient presence in her life that they'd never know the difference. The war did that. People had come and gone and she hadn't bothered to get close to anyone in a long time.

"You ready now?" Nena asked. "We should go. Helen's setting up, but I don't to leave her at Tia Carlotta's mercy."

With a snort, Audrey said, "I wouldn't want to leave _anyone_ at Tia Carlotta's mercy. But at least she finally stopped asking when we're both going to get married."

Nena's mouth twisted into a bitter smile. "Maybe if I had a crystal like yours I'd live long enough for me and Helen…" But she trailed off and shook her head. Audrey regretted saying anything. Her not getting married—well, that was because there was no one she _wanted_ to marry. Not really. Anyway, she had all the time in the world. But Nena, Nena would've done it in a heartbeat, except…well, Helen was _Helen,_ and that was the problem. "Come on," Nena said, already sounding back to normal.

It had been so long since she'd worn a dress that it was hard to climb into Nena's Chevrolet with the skirt getting tangled around her legs. Fifteen minutes in the car brought them to the event hall that Nena had rented. Audrey sighed when she saw it. Jeez. Seemed awfully big for 'not too many' people. But she didn't bother saying anything, and just followed Nena inside.

It was set up nice, at least. There was a good-sized dance floor, enough for forty or fifty people to fit on. A long buffet table was set up along one wall, lined with food pans with bright blue flames under them. Tables were set up, a simple floral arrangement on each one. Near the dance floor, Nena's partner, Helen, was flipping through a stack of records next to a record player.

"The flowers are nice," Audrey said, feeling like she needed to admit that so far, this wasn't as bad as she'd been worried about. She'd had visions of streamers, balloons, and Christmas lights strung up everywhere. "Where'd you get the flowers?"

Nena looked smug. "Oh, I had them flown in."

"What? _Estás loca_. Aren't there enough perfectly good florists in Dearborn?"

Grinning, Nena said, "Yeah, but Santorini Flowers is in the Bronx."

Floored, all Audrey could do was gape. Nena really _was loca_. What kind of crazy person flew flowers from halfway across the country just for a birthday party? "You bought these from _Vinny_?"

"He seemed happy to do it," Nena said with the air of someone who was telling a great joke that she knew her audience didn't get.

Her mouth still hanging open, Audrey looked harder at the closest flower arrangement. A single rose sat in a vase, surrounded by lily of the valley, asters, baby's breath, and parsley. She wasn't sure she'd ever actually seen any of his floral arrangements. It _was_ nice. Simple and pretty. It seemed incongruous for someone who loved destruction as much as he did to be so good at creating something beautiful.

Audrey fingered the rose and just repeated, "They look nice."

Within a few minutes, the door opened, and guests started trickling in. Music started playing, and Nena grabbed Audrey's arm and pulled her over to the door. It quickly became apparent how most conversations were going to go. The Cortez boys, both with paunches and thinning hair, stumbled over themselves to tell her how great she looked. Aunts, uncles, cousins, and second cousins that she hadn't seen in years couldn't believe she was turning fifty. Distant relatives kept arriving, Mom trying to prime her on which branch of the family tree they came from in the ten to fifteen seconds before they approached and exclaimed, "Audrey! You look the same as you did thirty years ago!"

Her cousin Maria, born only a month after Audrey in 1896, arrived, and for a second, just stared. "How do you still look like you're eighteen?" Maria said, both admiration and jealousy in her tone.

"Just lucky, I guess," Audrey said with a shrug. For the first time it occurred to her that there was going to become a point where this flippant response became absurdly untenable. What was she going to say then? It already wasn't quite believable that she'd been alive half a century, not with her unlined face. A twinge of unease went through her, which she pushed aside. It was her birthday. She'd have plenty of time to figure out what she was going to say about the fact that didn't age—she didn't need to think about it tonight.

Tia Carlotta showed up, along with Uncle Cicerón, the majority of her cousins, and a truly startling number of old neighbors and friends from the barrio. Mom and Papi had her pose for pictures and Papi told everyone that would listen how she'd fixed everything that had come through Langley for the past four years.

Then the dancing started, and Audrey found herself in a bubble of solitude—no one wanted her attention, no one wanted to catch up about the good old days. With a relieved sigh, she made her way to the side of the room. Bing Crosby was crooning through the record player and Audrey leaned a shoulder against the wall, happy to watch everyone else dance and mingle. This wasn't so bad, really. Especially now that she could take a breather from entertaining all of them.

"Hey, you look good in that dress."

Audrey started and instinctively folded her arms across her chest, feeling self-conscious before she even turned around. She'd been starting to feel really good about this party. A lot less murderous towards her sister. Well, so much for that. She really, _really_ was going to kill Nena, now. It was one thing to invite family, even old friends from the barrio. But this was crossing a line.

She looked up and met Vinny Santorini's eyes, feeling a weird jumble of emotions upon seeing him. Of course, they'd seen each other plenty during the war. Every day, practically. They'd been at the same base, and that had been…nice. Especially at first, when the names some of the other men had called her had been—well, not so nice. Not that she couldn't take care of herself, but the day Vinny had strolled into the mess hall—that had been a good day. After the jolt of surprise at seeing him burned through her, she'd felt a lightness take its place. Like a weight had been dragging her down, but just seeing him lessened it, somehow. She'd known him long enough by that point to catch the flicker of surprise in his gaze as he spotted her, even though he hid it well.

Of course, they'd called him nasty names, too. Wop, dago—she'd almost clocked one of them across his _maldito_ face one day, but Vinny had put a hand on her shoulder until she calmed down and afterwards had said, "Don't even bother with them. They're not worth your time."

"Yeah, but doesn't it make you mad?" she'd demanded. "Them calling you that stuff? We're on the _same side_ , and they're acting like you just came over from Mussolini's army or something!"

With a shrug, he'd said, "I seen a lot of stupid kids. Gunpowder and shrapnel does the same thing to all of 'em. So." He'd shrugged again. "I got called a lot worse in prison. And they're the ones going out _there_. Joke's on them, I guess, huh? I'm too old for the draft."

Audrey had cracked a tiny, mirthless smile at that. "You're looking pretty good for your age, old man."

"It's my skin routine, I swear by it." The single earring in his left ear had glinted.

So anyway, seeing Vinny wasn't a bad thing. Definitely not a bad thing. In fact, it was how much it _wasn't_ a bad thing that was so irritating about Nena inviting him. Audrey had no idea how, but Nena must've had some idea about the dumb fluttery feeling she got in her stomach sometimes when Vinny came around.

The fluttery feeling was doing its thing now. She guessed she'd been feeling it on and off for years, going all the way back to their first mission for Whitmore. But she'd been just a kid then. Twenty years felt like a lot less at fifty and seventy than it did at sixteen and thirty-six.

"I look _stupid_ in this dress," Audrey said.

"You know, you gotta get that negative streak under control," Vinny said, raising an eyebrow.

She uncrossed her arms to plant her hands on her hips. "You better not be making fun of me."

His eyebrow stayed arched. "Aud. You look good. It's okay to just take the compliment."

There went that flutter in her chest again. Meeting his eyes, she said, "Yeah yeah. Thank you very much, shut up." He smiled at her, and after a pause, she added, "You look good too. Nice suit." If you asked her, he was pulling off the suit a lot better than she was pulling off the dress. He was definitely a handsome man, suit or not, and her opinion there hadn't changed in thirty-some years.

"Just something I threw on." He plucked out the match that was dangling from his lips and stuck it behind his ear. "So, happy birthday. I gotta say, you haven't aged a day."

There was a glint of amusement in his eyes as he said this, and Audrey relented and smiled. "I can't believe you came. Nena invited you?"

"Yeah. Guess she remembered me." His mouth twitched into a slightly wider smile. "Or maybe you talked about me, huh?"

"Pfft." Audrey looked away. So what if she had? It had only been a couple times. Enough to give Nena the idea of ordering flowers from him. Anyway, Dad liked to hear what Vinny was up to. Then, she looked back at him. "Maybe."

Leaning against the wall next to her, he asked, "So, you have a good Christmas?"

With a shrug, Audrey said, "Yeah. Quiet. Nice to not have to worry about hearing about some new invasion, though. What about you?"

Vinny answered her shrug with one of his own. "Not quiet. Never is, at a Santorini holiday dinner." There came that little twitch of a smile again. "You oughtta meet my family sometime."

She remembered the first time he'd talked about his family, on a steamer journey through the North Sea that they'd all thought they'd never get off. The weather had been horrible that night, huge heaving swells and horizontal rain, and wind so bad you couldn't go up on deck without holding onto the rail—and even then, it was fifty-fifty whether you got tossed overboard or not. With the wind and rain lashing at the ship, Vinny and Audrey had holed up in their shared berth. Trying to navigate the corridors was too risky; Sweet had already had to see to a giant lump on Mole's head after he'd lost his balance from the ship's tossing and slammed it on a bulkhead.

"If this storm keeps up, I'm gonna miss my niece's wedding, and my sister's gonna kill me," Vinny had said as he'd stared out the tiny porthole into impenetrable dark. One of his hands was clamped onto the edge of his bunk to help keep him upright.

Audrey had looked up at him from the plan she was studying—some new invention called a Differential Analyzer, which she had a feeling was going to be a big deal someday. "You have a sister?" she'd asked.

He'd turned around—carefully, making sure to keep his grip on the bunk—and said, "I got two. And three brothers."

"I never knew that."

Ticking off on his fingers, he'd rattled off, "Alessia, Alfio, Domingo, Francesco, Lucia. I'm the oldest. I never told you this?"

"Nope."

"Huh."

The ship had rolled sickeningly from side to side and Audrey had grabbed at her stomach, really hoping that dinner wasn't going to make a reappearance. Vinny had cautiously sat down next to her, pulling a dog-eared photo out of his pocket, and Audrey had taken it, grinning. The whole Santorini family stared stone-faced into the camera, dressed in their finest. She'd pegged Vinny at eighteen, maybe nineteen, a sardonic glint in his eye despite the dour look on his face. He and his siblings were ranged around his parents, from Vinny right down to what must have been his youngest sister, just a little kid whose hands were blurred from fidgeting.

The memory made Audrey smile. "So, the whole gigantic family was there?"

"Oh, yeah. They've gotta kinda rotate in and out. Too many of 'em to all be in Lucia's house at one time." His lips moved as he tallied on his fingers. "Seventy-one—wait, no—yeah, that's right. Seventy-one grand-nieces and nephews. My parents loved it till the day they died." He shrugged. "But my Aunt Rosie's still around and running things. Still wants to know when I'm settling down, too." Giving her a laconic look, he said, "I think she's getting a little loopy, maybe. Forgetting how old I am."

Audrey laughed. "Nena and I were just talking about how our Aunt Carlotta finally stopped asking us about getting married. Let's hope she's not just taking a break for another try…"

"All part of the fun of huge extended families, Aud. You haven't learned to love the intrusive personal questions yet?"

"Maybe by the time I'm your age."

He laughed, and the two of them leaned against the wall together in companionable silence, watching everyone out on the parquet dance floor. Vera Lynn came on. Audrey couldn't hear her voice without thinking of the war.

Vinny glanced at her, then said, "Feels weird not seeing you all the time. I kinda got used to it, you know?"

Her heart hammered and she had to tell herself to cut it out. She wasn't going to get involved with Vinny Santorini. It was a categorically Bad Idea, and not just because she hadn't had a single relationship with a man that had meant much to her. But, she still said, "Me too."

Because it was true, she _had_ gotten used to it, and even if she had no intention of sacrificing their ironclad friendship for the possibility of something else, she couldn't pretend that she didn't _feel_ something slightly more than friendship for him. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "Maybe now that the war's over, Whitmore will have something for us to do, though."

"Hey, I'm in if you are."

They met each other's eyes and she said, "Deal."

Over by the record player, Nena had slipped her arm around Helen's waist, and the two of them were swaying in time to the music. A flare of sadness went through Audrey that they couldn't dance together like everyone else. Vinny was looking in the same direction, and she thought she saw the same emotion echoed on his face. It was always hard to tell with him, though. Not like her—Audrey had always worn her emotions plainly on her sleeve, for everyone to see whether they wanted to or not. She kind of hoped that Vinny didn't notice the way she looked at him, but then again, she kind of hoped he did, at the same time.

Vera Lynn's warble trailed off and the opening woodwinds of Billie Holiday's "The Way You Look Tonight" started playing. Vinny gave her a considering look, then held out a hand. "Want to dance?"

"Dance?" she asked, so startled that her voice came out high-pitched and strangled.

He put the match back in his mouth and smiled. "Yeah. See what all those people are doing over there? That's called dancing. What do you say?"

"Ha ha, very funny," she said, recovering and rolling her eyes. She wasn't actually sure if she was referring to his joke or the invitation.

"Hey, if you don't want to, I can take the rejection." His eyebrow went up and his lips twitched into a smile under his mustache. "So is that a 'no'?"

She thought of some of the life or death situations she'd been in with Vinny Santorini over the years. Of hanging onto him while they rode a flying stone fish in front of a wave of lava. Of catching him as he slid down a cliff face and wrapping her arms around him until the shock of the close call faded and Mole could get to both of them. Of being tossed around in rough seas or explosions. Of all the times she'd been in close physical contact with him and thought absolutely nothing of it, and how none of those times had seemed quite so terrifying as taking his hand and dancing with him.

But his hand was still outstretched, and she knew she wasn't going to say no, even if she couldn't bring herself to say yes. Not out loud, anyway.

Instead, she slipped her hand into his wordlessly. His smile got a little wider and Audrey's heart moved from fluttering to full-blown bouncing off her ribcage. She knew she wasn't hiding it, either, and that it was written all over her face, plain as day. The only thing that kept it from being mortifying was the fact that she was pretty sure she saw the same thing echoed in his eyes, the one place where she could usually catch a flicker of what he was really feeling.

They didn't go to the dance floor, instead turning to face each other where they were standing. Vinny put his hand at the small of her back, light but confident, and with a deep breath, she placed her palm on his chest, curling her fingers around the top of his shoulder. Their fingers interlocked and both of them closed the space between them at the same time, so they were standing chest to chest, eyes locked.

Audrey wasn't much of a dancer—the last dance she'd really mastered was the Charleston. She'd never managed to pick up the Lindy Hop, let alone anything later than that. But to her surprise, Vinny could do the foxtrot—and he was good at it. She tried to remember the steps, but even though she knew she put her feet out of place a few times, his finesse made up for it. "Where'd you learn how to dance?" she asked.

"Eh, I go to a lot of weddings. It's the big family. You start looking stupid after awhile if you're just standing there while everyone else is dancing." He extended an arm and twirled her at the end of it.

When they were face to face again, Audrey gripped his hand tighter and he squeezed back. Without thinking about what she was doing, she rested her cheek against his chest, and his hand on her back held her closer.

And then the song ended. They held onto each other for another moment, until the next song started. Bing Crosby, "I'll Be Seeing You." This one had always made her sad, especially watching all those kids going off to war. Audrey took a breath, squeezed his hand again, and let go. Vinny held her gaze, and she smiled at him. "C'mon," she said. "You want something to eat?"

That languorous smile on his face, Vinny said, "Sure. You got any cake at this birthday party?"

She couldn't stop her own smile from getting a little wider and probably a little more stupid. The flutter had taken up residence in her chest again. Maybe it would be like this every time she saw him. "Well, they haven't cut it yet. But I'm not going to turn fifty every day—so if I want to have cake now, we should have cake now, right?"

Vinny chuckled and Audrey met his eyes, then had to look away before the flutter got any worse. She was still kind of annoyed that Nena had thrown this thing together after Audrey had said not to. But…well, maybe she'd help plan the next one. And maybe she'd pick up a few dance steps between now and then.


End file.
